Dutch Revolt

The Dutch Revolt, commonly called the Eighty Years' War, was two revolts against the Hapsburg Spanish Empire by the Dutch Protestants in the Low Countries. The revolt, beginning with a spree of pious vandalism in 1566, ended only with the Peace of Westphalia that accompanied the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648, with the United Provinces gaining independence.

Background
With the "nation state" just beginning to emerge in Europe, dynastic problems soon arose. Family connections cut across national lines. So, often, did a ruler's loyalties.

Dynastic Power
Charles I of Spain was also Charles V, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. He had been born in Ghent, in present-day Belgium. He came by the Burgundian possession of the Netherlands as heir to the Burgundian House of Valois. But he was also successor to the Austrian House of Habsburg - not to mention the thrones of Catalonia and Aragon.

Counter-Reformation King
The Catholic Church could see that the Protestants had tapped into a profoundly spiritual hunger; it noted the energy of the new congregations, and sought to renew itself with a "Counter-Reformation" with Charles as its temporal leader. Having led a determined attempt to suppress Protestantism in Germany, defeated thanks to French support for the German Lutheran princes, he viewed the rise of Protestantism in the Netherlands with alarm. When he abdicated in 1556 to devote his life to prayer, his son Philip II of Spain continued his work.

Philip II felt threatened by dissent of any sort; under his rule the activities of the Inquisition intensified. In Granada, in 1568, moriscos - descendants of Muslims forcibly converted to Christianity during the Reconquista - staged a revolt, which Philip put down with brutal force.

War
For the Dutch Protestants, sacred images of every kind were false idols. Catholic churches were full of stone and wooden figures, stained glass, and carvings. In 1566 a Protestant spree of pious vandalism commenced. Philip II had always suspected that Protestantism was associated with the rejection of authority. The doctrines of Calvin and Luther had taken root in northern Europe, among an increasingly affluent merchant class. The ports and industrial cities were home to self-confident communities whose people expected a measure of intellectual independence. When the Spanish general, the Duke of Alba, led an army into Brussels in 1567 to crack down on the rebels and reinstate Catholicism, the population rose up in a patriotic rage.

Resistance coalesced around the figure of William the Silent, Prince of Orange, but the suppression of the dissenters was quick. Hundreds were executed. A rebel army marched out at Rheindalen in April 1568, but its volunteers were no match for the soldiers of the Spanish Crown.

Repression and Resistance
The unrest went on. Alba, exasperated at the Dutch defiance, reacted with atrocities. Terrible massacres took place at Zutphen and Naarden, and then in Haarlem in 1573. Far from encouraging other cities to surrender, such conduct strengthened their defiance. Alba found this conflict frustrating. He knew his 60,000 soldiers should be "a sufficient number to conquer many kingdoms", and yet, he lamented, "it does not suffice me here". Alba took a town but, once he departed, the rebels reappeared. The seige of Leiden in 1573 had to be liften when William the Silent appeared with a makeshift army. Alba defeated them at Mookerheyde and in September 1574 resumed his siege. The Dutch failed to oust the Spanish, and were on the point of starvation when they were relieved by the ships of the Watergeuzen ("Sea Beggars"). The geuzen were Calvinist privateers who had originally sought asylum in English ports. Expelled by Elizabeth I in 1568, they returned to fight for the rebels in the Netherlands. Despite this early rebuff, England gave covert then, from the 1580s, increasingly open support for the Dutch Revolt.

A New Approach
Alba was called back to Spain in 1573. His replacement, Luis de Requesens, found it hard to maintain a moderate course in a conflict that was not just exasperating but financially draining. By 1576 Spanish troops were going unpaid. Angry soldiers went on a rampage in Antwerp in an episode known as the "Spanish Fury", killing 8,000 in three days. Chastened, the Spanish authorities agreed an alliance of the various regions of the Habsburg Netherlands. The Pacification of Ghent was signed in 1576. Spain, however, reclaimed the initiative when significant funds began to arrive from the American slave mines. In 1579 the Duke of Parma was sent as Governor. His "divide and conquer" approach played on the tensions he saw between the southern cities and the more militant, aggressively Calvinist northern centres. Parma persuaded the southern states (now Flanders) to form the Union of Arras, loyal to Spain. The north responded with their own Union of Arras, loyal to Spain. The north responded with their own Union of Utrecht. The Duke made the southern cities his base for a new campaign of conquest. Spain suffered a setback in 1588 when the Armada, sent to wage war on England, was defeated. William the Silent died in 1584: his son, Maurice of Nassau, was among the greatest generals of the age, creating coherence in what had been an ill-matched assemblage of volunteer militias and mercenaries. While his recognition of the need to make his army into a fighting machine seems modern, his stated aim was to train his army more Romano ("in the Roman way"), and he called many of his ideas from the ancients. His men performed endless respective drills with pikes and muskets, every one broken down into individual movements and each one numbered. He rationalized the army's structures, training new officers to command smaller companies. Maurice of Nassau thereby built a more flexible fighting force.

He then did all the could to keep it safe. In 20 years (while laying siege to cities and attacking fortresses), he contrived to fight just two pitched battles. In 1600, however, his superior tactics were shown when he defeated Spain at Nieuwpoort, near Dunkirk. Less fortunately for Maurice, the brilliant Italian general and fianncier, Ambrogio Spinola, emtered the service of the Crown. But from 1609, hostilities were suspended during the Twelve Years Truce.

Naval Mastery
The Thirty Years War began in 1618, and fighting resumed in the Netherlands in 1621. Maurice of Nassau's health was failing and he could not prevent Spinola from taking the crucial city of Breda in 1625. By this point Maurice was gravely ill - he died while the Siege of Breda was taking place. His half-brother, Henry Frederick, assumed command.

The Dutch nevertheless made good progress at sea. In 1628 Piet Heyn captured the Spanish treasure fleet. Its ships were bringing silver back from the mines of the New World - their loss was a deep humiliation and a major blow for Spain. Maritime warfare had been changing fast - ships with side-mounted cannon were becoming the nor,, and the Dutch had been quick in acquiring mastery. They had shown this as early as 1607 in their audacious attack on the Spanish off Gibraltar. In 1639, at the battle of the Downs, just off the coast of England, Maarten Tromp and his fellow seafarers savaged a Spanish fleet bringing reinforcements for the war effort in Flanders.

Spain was running out of options. It had not been defeated; but neither was there any realistic prospect of its winning - money was running out and lives were being lost. When the Thirty Years War came to its conclusion in 1648, Spain's power was weakened. The country finally acknowledged the independence of the Dutch Republic.

Aftermath
The Dutch Revolt claimed many lives and destroyed many cities. The survivors were to witness many changes as their country revelled in its new-found independence.

The Thirty Years War
Those who survived the Dutch Revolt - especially in the northern cities - discovered a new sense of national identity. Though only peripherally involved in the unfolding agonies of the Thirty Years War, they felt the turbulence that the conflict caused at the heart of Europe.

Renewed Naval Might
As soon as hostilities ceased and the Treaty of Westphalia was signed in 1648, the Netherlands flourished. A new economic and cultural force in Northern Europe, the country became an emergent military power, its growing might at sea setting it against England during the Anglo-Dutch War.

As intrepid seafarers, the Dutch were soon opening up new areas for colonial exploitation in the East Indies. Some of these conquests were to haunt them in much later times, such as when Indonesia struggled for its independence in the years after World War II.